The assignment is simple: Pick a country ... guess how you might expect them to vote, giving reasons for your answer ... then look at how they really voted. Next, try to think about additional reasons that might explain their actual vote. Final step: go online and see what others are saying about why the country voted the way they did.

This will prove to be a very illuminating exercise for anyone -- young or old -- who thinks they know which countries are working for the peace and safety of the world.

"Standing With the Nonwhite World to Ban Nuclear Weapons" by Vincent J. Intondi: "It is no surprise that this current attempt to eliminate nuclear weapons is being led by many nonwhite nations. In 1955, ten years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, twenty-nine nations of Asia and Africa gathered in Bandung, Indonesia . . . "

How do you formulate a statement that can somehow convince the United States to eliminate its threatening nuclear weapons? How do you formulate the 10th request? Or the 100th? Knowing all the time that the United States is in the position -- will always be in the position -- to say, "No" ? At what point does it dawn on you that the United States will never give up its nuclear weapons, because it has the power and the rest of the world doesn't?

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski. It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

"It's not enough to remember this just once a year; it's not enough that we make a single book -- Hiroshima -- required reading, and never go beyond that. There should be a whole canon that people study progressively, year by year, to grasp and retain the horror of this."